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Here is a story I have shopped around a bit with no success that I wrote as an exercise in The Yard Gnome Army Fiction Writer’s Boot Camp (taught by author Jeremy C. Shipp). Since I have not posted anything here in a couple of weeks and I really want to try and get in on Friday Flash on the Twitter (#fridayflash), I figured I’d put it up here. Enjoy!

Sewer Elves

By

Taylor Kent

Damn sewer elves. What? You don’t know what sewer elves are? Well let me tell you they didn’t used to be a problem. Hell, back in my day we didn’t even have sewer elves. We had gators. You hear me, gators. Yeah, some kid would buy a baby alligator as a pet and then it would take a nip at him or get a little big and then it was the old flush-a-roo. Yeah, right down the toilet into the sewers. I shit you not. It happened all the time. Gators could be found in the sewers of all the cities in America. Even the small town starting having problems.

These gators would eat sewage and get all mutant crazy and stuff. And then dogs and cats would disappear. And then kids and old people. Gators started grabbing people right off the streets. It got so bad that the gators would grab people in broad day light. I shit you not.

What? So what this got to do with elves? Well that’s a good question. A good question. You see things got so crazy in the city, and I mean New York City, that the citizens basically got a mob together and told the mayor they were going to hang his ass if he didn’t get rid of the gators. You never heard about that? Well, trust me it happened. I shit you not.

Well, the mayor, Johnson or maybe Anderson I don’t exactly remember, was an odd guy. He was rumored to be into black magic or Voodoo or Scientology or some other evil shit. Well he called up the Devil… What? No, not on the phone. What?! You think you can just look up The Devil in the phone book. No, the mayor used some Hoodoo ritual or something and raised up The Devil. And the Mayor and The Devil struck a deal to get rid of the Gators. That deal was that the Devil would send some Elves to hunt down all the Gators in all the sewers. I shit you not.

Well as per usual, The Devil is crafty. And well the Mayor wasn’t so smart. So the Mayor didn’t think about what would happen when all the Gators were gone. And now those little, winged, arrow shooting bastards have filled up the sewers. And without any gators to eat they are out hunting people at night. I shit you not. Elves hunt down people in the streets and drag them down into the sewers.

You ever wonder why it always smells like roast pork these days? Well, that cause they roast their victims.

I’ve seen them. Sleeping in this box in this alley, I see lots of things. And I have seen them elves rise out the sewers glowing all sickly green with fluttering bug wings. I’ve seen them elves stalk up behind their victims all silent like. I’ve seen them drag their victims, living and dead, back down to their lairs.

Sometime they call out to me. Sometime they cry. But they always go down and are never seen again.

Why don’t they take me? I’m working with them elves. I help ’em. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to get roasted down in those sewer pipes.